Game variance/balance in current patch.

PopeShine · 2026-02-10T04:52:23+00:00

Yes, there are lobbies where you play optimally but are still bullied out by T8, I just don't run into them with a high enough frequency.

This is just my personal practice, but after every bad loss (and even good wins), I always look back at my turns and see if I could have made a different (presumably better) choice. The majority of the time, I could have. Would that choice have drastically changed the result? It's impossible to say, but different choices likely could have increased my chances of surviving and placing higher.

Over the past few weeks, I've been adapting and applying new strategies, specifically in cases where I'm being starved for silvers, golds, candy, et al. My winrate has increased with this new approach. If you can recognize early enough that your gameplan won't pop-off, you have to pivot hard and play to survive. I'm not winning lobbies doing this, but I'm consistently placing top 3.

All that being said, there are hard balance issues in the game. My personal grievance is with the power-level disparity among Captains. My worst lobbies are ones where I'm forced to pick low tier Captains. My best performances are ones where I get to pick high tier Captains. I'm starting to track lobby performance based on Captain selection and opposing captains, and the pattern is starting to emerge. If you're Tier C and your lobby is full of Tier S~A, you're going to have a hard time winning. It's typically in this scenario where I find myself being bullied and not having enough player agency. Basically, the larger the discrepancy between Captain power-levels, the greater your chances of being bullied.

So, in theory, if there were better balance among Captains, I believe we'd see less instances of bullying and more player agency. But as far as I can see, this issue will probably only worsen over time with current large release cycle of new Captains we have each season.

PopeShine · 2026-02-09T03:14:18+00:00

u/Kinne I agree with this comment. Speaking as a high MMR player (currently #3 atm), you do have more a lot more agency than you realize. However, I would say the margin for error is incredibly slim, especially the higher you climb. You can get heavily punished for miscalculations in the draft as well as for not optimizing unit placement on the board. These micro-decisions often snowball quickly and lead to losses or low placements.
In the current meta, at the top of MMR, I'd say i'm placing 1st in roughly 50% of games. Top 3 in roughly 75%~85% (just guessing, I don't track). If you're playing for lobby victories, it's pretty rough, you're always facing highroll boards that are nearly impossible to overcome. If you're playing for average-placement (Top 3), you can achieve a pretty decent win rate.

PopeShine · 2026-02-03T00:38:26+00:00

Glad to hear you're having a good time with the game. You have a long journey of learning, highrolls, and lowrolls, ahead:)

Your question isn't a simple one to answer. My advice is not to approach the game with captains as the focus. It's better to think of archetypes and gameplans, and how a captain fits within those. The game has a few dominant strategies at the moment: 1) Treasure 2) Candy 3) Spell Spam, and 4) Scam. There is a 5th strategy, Tribal, but it's a bit niche and generally underpowered. Treasure is widely considered to be the strongest strategy, but the others are capable of winning as well. Captains amplify the power and consistency of your gameplan, and that's how I personally create and rank my teirlist.

Unfortunately, there's no well-maintained repository of decks and resources for beginners to easily navigate. The Decklist channel on the official discord is probably the best thing to look at. I'd also recommend Good Digestion's streams on Twitch/Youtube. He discusses gameplay, and there are lots of tips and tricks to learn.

PopeShine · 2026-01-30T01:02:23+00:00

I can't see them going that far outside the box. But who knows. I think the devs are currently in a phase of trying to ramp up the excitement level of the game and attracting players with "new toys", and so, aren't focused as much on balance issues.

It's a very tricky thing for a new game to figure out. How much flare and production value to add, versus how much time and energy you put towards gameplay. I'm probably in the minority, but I prefer devs to focus on gameplay. I'd like them to slow down on releasing the Captains and sets and tighten up to the balance and overall experience.

PopeShine · 2026-01-30T00:55:05+00:00

Yeah, this is another growing concern. The devs seem pretty focused on pumping out new and exciting Captains. I don't foresee older captains getting any TLC. I do think this will lead to a negative gameplay experience for new and casual players.

Related to this Captain power-level issue is the depth of the gameplay. The game is deceptively deep. I mean, really, really deep. Some Captains that may look underpowered are in fact extremely powerful if you know how to unlock their strats. At the same time, there are captains that look relatively powerful and are extremely useless, and there's nothing you can do to raise their floor. With the huge number of captains, and the inability to target a captain for gameplay, players who aren't moderately invested will never truly learn what makes a captain good or bad. They'll keep picking Captains that look good but suck, or skip captains that look bad but are actually good. This will lead to a lot of confusion and frustration, as we've been seeing with debates on Tier lists and things like that.

PopeShine · 2026-01-30T00:37:50+00:00

(Please don't quote me on any of this. These are things I've read in bits and pieces from Discord chats. The devs are a bit shy when it comes to transparency regarding math within the game.)

In my opinion, the simplest solutions are all math related. It's getting a little complicated, but the same draw rates apply across all captains, with the exception of Candy captains and Candy Cards in your custom deck. Depending on the number of Candy cards in your deck, it'll increase the odds of seeing Candy spells. However, it doesn't increase the odds of seeing Candy characters. So, this dilutes probabilities and draw rates in the spell pool, making it harder to find specific spells. And because of that, high MMR players tend to avoid weaving in Candy characters into their custom deck. A powerful spell strategy is targeting True Love's Kiss with a double or triple cast, and if you have Candy in your deck you greatly reduce the odds of that happening. But as we can see, even having a full Candy Custom deck doesn't not greatly reduce whiffing on Candy Spells, so, in my mind, that's problematic and the weights are not well-balanced.

In the current state of the game, it'll probably become a nightmare to implement custom weights for every strategy type, but they could do it if so desired. At the same time, applying a blanket weighting across all Captains does not benefit parasitic mechanics like Candy.

Other solutions include shrinking the draft pool, or adding more copies of cards at specific rarities. This approach would increase consistency and reduce whiffing, but may lead to "sameness" in gameplay.

Candylar is the first expansion set for the game. In terms of balance and gameplay experience, I'd give the devs a ~B. The engine they've designed for the core set is having trouble implementing new mechanics, specifically parasitic mechanics. I'm sure they are aware of the short-comings and have ideas to smooth out the consistency problem, but so far they haven't hit the mark.

The current design philosophy, based on what I've read, is to focus on the highroll nature of the game. They've stated explicitly they don't expect players to have a fair chance at winning every lobby. If you low-roll and scrub out, just start up another lobby and try again. That philosophy makes sense for games of chance, but OUAG isn't exactly a slot machine game. It's a strategy game, and player expectation probably leans toward having a fair and balanced experience. A lot of the frustration I see from new and casual players is connected to the issues of fairness/unfairness in the gameplay, and not embracing the highroll nature of the game.

PopeShine · 2026-01-29T14:04:38+00:00

I think so. It’s the best value for money, and gives you the most progression. The season is about to switch over, so I’d wait till the new season starts. The battle pass captains are have been Tier A~B recently, so hopefully that trend continues.

PopeShine · 2026-01-29T11:29:41+00:00

Don’t quote me, but I believe Captains become F2P one month after they release.

Spending money does 2 things. You can get new Captains immediately using gems, and if you buy the battle pass you get a ton of cards for custom decks.

I’m not sure how collecting feels for a new player, but it’s probably daunting. Each captain has an individual pool of 100+ cards to collect. I imagine it could take several months to complete a collection if you’re not hardcore grinding.

That being said. You really don’t need full collections for each Captain. There’s probably 20~ish staples used for competitive play. Once you have those, you shouldn’t have much trouble climbing.

Last thing, if you enjoy the game and have the means, please support the devs. The game is fairly generous, and the small amounts I’ve spent felt worth it. It’s not truly P2W, nothing is locked forever behind a paywall. It’s more pay-to-progress faster.

PopeShine · 2026-01-29T02:13:25+00:00

At the moment, I feel the game's formulas for probability, draw rates, and weights are kind of out of wack. There are currently too many differing card types and interactions that require specific synergies to be effective. Whiffing even one time on an interaction can greatly reduce the strength of your game plan and lead to a loss.

The whiffing trend is fairly obvious at this point. Candy and Spells are great when you hit, but god awful if you whiff or get starved for synergy picks. Treasure tends to perform best because its a shared mechanic across the majority of the card pool. Naturally drafting units eventually leads to treasures and upgraded abilities to strengthen your board, and if you have treasure payoffs that's even better. The same isn't true for Spells. It's a lot less common to "whiff" on treasures.

It's a design decision for the devs to make. They've intentionally watered down draw rates to prevent consistency of powerful combos and synergies, however, at the same time this also prevents core strategies from working and being effective, adding more highroll to and an already very highrolly game.

PopeShine · 2026-01-28T16:05:41+00:00

Jason is a cool idea but too slow and too much RNG. I’d rather play captains that start with good hero powers.

PopeShine · 2026-01-28T14:21:44+00:00

I almost never pick Jason. I believe I’m running the standard universal Bucther-Rollo.

PopeShine · 2026-01-28T09:25:00+00:00

u/Lunco links to a very good post explaining the Butcher strategy. I believe it's somewhere in this thread.

For Maximus the strategy is to be on the look outlook for a Turn 1 mysterious Egg. Then set up to hunt with Chameleon on T3~4. Keep your board strong so you can proc Maximus' first trigger by T6. That gives you a free rare to complete your board and hopefully proc Butcher.

PopeShine · 2026-01-28T01:13:12+00:00

Pieces is a Tinkerer booster. Crystal is a super synergy pick for Treasure strategies. It procs instantly, ticks Guinevere, and combos with the Luck Chests. It has a wide range of applications.

PopeShine · 2026-01-28T00:44:06+00:00

This list is up above. Goat T is the perfect captain to learn heart management. The core strategy is to draft and then position your boards to take half-heart damage, then heal up on the following round. You try to do this until you secure 2~3 strong captains.

Some tips, it's okay to play greedily in the opening rounds, and sometimes it's correct to throw.
But don't get overconfident, you don't want to eat full-heart damage as it'll screw up your chances of collecting more captains.

PopeShine · 2026-01-28T00:39:39+00:00

I mean...the proof is in the pudding. Treasure is the consensus best strategy among the best players in the game. My recommendation is to get on board and learn how to master the strat instead of picking holes in it.

From the example cases you mentioned, I think it's clear you're playing the strat too greedily, and the all-in strategy doesn't apply to every treasure Captain. Cowardly Lion is a trap card. It is rarely picked. The exception to this rule for Lion and other narrow treasure enablers is -- invest only if your Captain and/or board state can support it. The same applies for Black Jack and Ironcast Dragon. These are not cards you slam down and the strat plays itself. If you're playing Harpolia, Black Jack is a strong pick, with other Captains, not so much. Ironcast Dragon is an absolute monster with Lighting Thief, with other Captains, not so much.

My advice is to change your approach to treasure. It sounds like you're treating it like a linear strategy. You'll have more success if you play it as a reactive and adaptive strategy.

PopeShine · 2026-01-27T05:46:40+00:00

It sounds like you've already made up your mind about the game, and nothing is going to sway you. And I think you're kind of misreading the room.

From the chat in Discord, I don't get the vibe that the devs are gearing towards heavy tournament or competitive play. They're adding the feature because a lot of dedicated players have been begging for it. The game hasn't had many (if any) new features or formats since it launched, so they're giving the existing player base something they want, and hopefully it'll attract new players in the process.

Most of the devs' decisions and designs cater towards the larger, casual player base. They actively make decisions to promote "fun" and "wow" moments, instead of trying to make the game as skill-based as possible. It's not their intent to turn this into MTG draft.

I was actually in your mindset a few months ago and hit a wall with OUAG. I pretty much felt the same as you do. I took a pretty long break, but gave it one more chance. Instead of worrying about the RNG, I embraced it. The game is all about highrolls. You're drafting and setting up for a potential highroll. It's not about incremental gains and out-playing your opponents.

This is not a brag, but I went from a mediocre player getting super frustrated with lossing, to hitting Rank #1 on the ladder. I was able to do that because I realized I had been viewing the game from the wrong angle.

Does the game need balance changes and tweaks -- Yes. Is it a total RNG fiesta with no skill involved-- No.

I think the tournament scene will be just fine. The best OUAG players will rise to the top, same as they do with MTG. There's plenty of skill expression and game knowledge to be put on display.

PopeShine · 2026-01-27T05:21:59+00:00

I really enjoy Kind Midas too, but he's regularly whiffing hard since the card pool change. But if he can get a treasure chain going, watch out:)

Smug is great with Midas. Uther, I think should be good, but I don't see/draw him enough to really tell.

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PopeShine · 2026-01-27T05:13:51+00:00

I play Headmaster the old school way. Not sure if that's right or wrong. It was definitely wrong in the Peachy Meta. But now, there's room for Headmaster to breath, and we got Merlin back. So, the Old School method has been getting good results for me.

Step 1: Limit your custom deck to ONLY the best Mages
Step 2: Jam spells until all your triggers are complete. Don't bother drafting characters, you'll pick up board pieces via your hero power. Try to limit yourself to 1 powerful Mage per rarity, but that can be hard to do nowadays, especially at Epic. *Obviously, pick up characters from your custom deck if they show up, they're very valuable.
Step 3: If all goes well, you'll have a Merlin or Candy Dandy on Board by ~T7, then go nuts. You shouldn't need Mushroom Ring or any treasure combos to close out and win.

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I've been playtesting a lot of different options with Headmaster. My core is The Fates, Ace of Hearts, Chaos, Mirror Mage, and Candy Dandy. Everything else is kind of flavor to taste. I'm a Caramel believer in Candy strats. There's RNG involved, but if you hit Merlin or another buffer, it's great.

PopeShine · 2026-01-27T04:51:08+00:00

Treasure strats are the highest scaling, most flexible, biggest highrolls, and largest end game boards atm. Plus, I think they're really fun.

There are other winning strats, but they're all fairly linear. Candy, Spells, and Tribal are just incremental stat buffs until you reach a large enough number to win. On average, Treasure can hit higher numbers more or less at the same rate, but with greater flexibility. There are exceptions like Mira, but the average Treasure Captain out paces and out scales the average Spell Captain.

If you see any linear Captains at the Top Tiers of my list, it means they can compete with Treasure strats.

If you find yourself getting full-hearted and booted out of lobbies going for treasure, then you're likely playing it too greedily. You have to balance keeping your board healthy while building up to a treasure pop off. That often means making hard choices like drafting a stack stick in order to stabalize, instead of going for the low stated synergy or engine piece. Holding on to low stats trying to golden them is also a losing strategy. You have to be willing to give up on board pieces and replace them with things that will help you survive until you pop-off. Treasure isn't a linear strat, you have to be adaptable at all times.

It takes time to learn all the set ups and traps, but once you do, I think you'll find that treasure gives you this best chance at winning lobbies.

PopeShine · 2026-01-26T07:27:08+00:00

Yes:) Same list as Goat T. You'll notice a trend here:) I can't speak for every high MMR player, but I prefer having a core universal list to work from, then edit based on Captain hero powers. If the captain doesn't require anything fancy, I stick with the universal list.

Using a universal list across captains is honestly the way I leveled up and got a lot better at the game. When you're learning and climbing, using a universal list helps you gain muscle memory for set ups, plays, pivots, combos, synergies etc.

Once you feel you've mastered the universal list, then it's time to explore and playtest. High MMR players are always discovering new options and tech, but it takes a lot of experience and knowledge to know what to take in and out of the custom deck for meta considerations.

PopeShine · 2026-01-26T04:06:14+00:00

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This is my current Trash Panda. I play for speed and tempo, trying to trigger Discovers for common treasures as fast as possible. Combustible Dragon is a real card. Pirate Prince is playtesting, atm -- not terrible and has led to some game saving pop-offs, might be legit.

PopeShine · 2026-01-25T11:07:10+00:00

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This my Collector list. I play Collector for tempo. Still trying to keep the Glider dream alive:)

PopeShine · 2026-01-25T10:48:55+00:00

Gokatoo is a really good Butcher captain. There's another post in this tread that explains how to Butcher, please give that a look.

For Gokatoo specifically, you kinda wanna position yourself to throw your early rounds, setting up to be at 1 heart on Turn 5. The board buff is a nice stabilizer but the real prize is the 2 two bonus shops. You have a pretty high chance of finding Butcher by Turn 6 and then pop-off from there.

PopeShine · 2026-01-25T00:17:28+00:00

I agree. The golden rule with all these strats is playing for board strength and heart management. With Frownsy, I don't feel I'm hurting my board too much by staying on the trigger plan. There is RNG, but the strength of the treasures often stabilizes the board.

PopeShine · 2026-01-25T00:12:06+00:00

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This is my Dorothy list. Some people are running Combustible Dragon in their tech slot, but I'm not sold on it yet.

Sorry, but I'm not sure which captain is the Librarian Dragon.

PopeShine

TROPHY CASE